Communicating with a medical device over a network is known in the art. These medical devices have a fixed communication mode specific to the environment in which they are used.
For example, because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), medical devices deployed in some environments do not communicate at all. In intensive care units (ICU), it is beneficial to report the status of the medical device to a central unit frequently, while using as little of the network and monitoring station resources as possible. To achieve these goals, medical devices for use in ICU environments often use a communications mode that requires the medical device to report its status at a preset interval. In other environments, it may not be necessary to receive status updates as often as in the ICU environment. In this case, it often requires less of the network and monitoring station resources to use a mode wherein a medical device only reports its status when queried. This may also be a preferred mode if the user is not concerned with network and monitoring station resource consumption.
Currently, medical devices are designed for use in only one of the above environments.